4. WHAT CITIZENS OF KYRGYZSTAN MAKE OF THE WORD “CORRUPTION”

Our investigation has showed that inspite of the frequent reminding the word “corruption”, its exact definition is still unclear. There are sufficiently clear definitions of bribe-taking and other administrative crimes, but criminal-juridical core of corruption has some “grey aureole”. For instance, the majority of citizens of Kyrgyzstan associate the word “corruption” with bribe-taking (21%), Mafia (14%), abusing of power (12%), stealing, graft and pushing of “necessary” people (10% correspondingly).

Question: In the mass media there is often said about corruption. What do you associate with this word?

Workers of law-enforcement bodies, courts and teachers-lawyers have another point of view: corruption is first of all bribe (18%), then merging of governmental bodies with criminal world (17%), abusing of power (16%), pushing “necessary” people (13%), and graft (12%).

We tried to identify, how well workers of law-enforcement bodies know legislative regulations. In order to identify that there were asked two questions to representatives of courts, Ministry of Internal Affaires, teachers-lawyers: does the definition of corruption exist in our legislative regulations, and in what law it is defined. In the Figure 6 it is shown that workers of courts and public prosecutor’s office are more informed about existence of legislative definition of corruption, than teachers-lawyers and, especially, workers of the Ministry of Internal Affaires. The highest percentage of responders, who found the question difficult to answer were workers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - 9% and the lowest were teachers-lawyers and workers of the public prosecutor’s office - 2 and 3 percents correspondingly.

Figure 6. Awareness about legislative definition of corruption

Question: Does the definition of corruption exist in our legislation?

Inspite of the fact that there is no Law about corruption, “Definition of corruption is presented in the law of corruption” is the answer of 8% of workers of the Ministry of Internal Affaires, 5% of teachers-lawyers, 4% of workers of public prosecutor’s office and 1% of judges and court executors. Another 3% of workers of the Ministry of Internal Affaires mistakenly consider that the definition of corruption is given in the Law about governmental officials.

We have revealed that about four fifth of representatives of law-enforcement bodies confirm that they know about existence of legislative definition of corruption, and only 64% of representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affaires could correctly name the law, in which the definition is given.

Let us summarize: the majority of citizens of Kyrgyzstan associate word “corruption” with bribe, which undoubtedly is the core of corruption. Even the representatives of public prosecutor’s office do not have clear understanding of definition of corruption, that makes us to think about imperfection and vagueness of this definition in Kyrgyz legislation. Perhaps, due to that fact, since January 1999 there was started only one criminal case on article 303 of Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic - Corruption. It witnesses that this legal normative is not working practically. Criminal Code needs to be worked out in this direction. In these conditions it is not astonishing that knowledge of workers of law-enforcement bodies needs improvement in the field of juridical definition of corruption. So, about 40% of workers of the Ministry of Internal Affaires, 20% of workers of public prosecutor’s office cannot name correctly the Law, in which the definition of corruption is presented.